Vehicle sales drop to 905 units in October

Vehicle sales continued to decline by 17.7% y-o-y and 7.8% m-o-m to 905 units in October 2018, with the decline underpinned by a 24.3% m-o-m decline in light commercial vehicles to 442 units, coupled with a drop in medium commercial vehicles of 35.7% m-o-m to 18 units.

Simonis Storms Securities this week said that they expect vehicle sales to decline by 12.8% to 11 605 units in 2018 from 13313 units in 2017.

Toyota (44.5%) and Volkswagen (17.5%) maintained good market share with units increasing by 6 and 48 units respectively, in October. With most brands fading, Ford and Nissan recorded a drop of 15 and 129 units respectively, during the period under review.

“Strain in the vehicle space is reinforced by sluggish consumer spending, contracting instalment credit growth and high transportation costs. Transport inflation elevated over the last four months weighing heavily on vehicle owners under an already tough environment,” Indileni Nanghonga, Junior Analyst at Simonis Storms said.

Meanwhile, petrol prices increased by N$2.6 to N$13.95 since the beginning of the year, with diesel increasing by N$3.8 to an average of N$14.50.

Nanghonga said that this increases can be attributed to a 36% increase in global oil prices, increase in fuel levies coupled with a 16.7% depreciation in the Rand since the beginning of 2018. She added that South Africa is expected to cut fuel prices in December due to the sharp fall in the rand price of crude oil (down 18.8% in November 2018).